TALLINN - The trial against the people charged with plotting mass riots in Tallinn in late April 2007 has re-opened in Estonia on Monday after a three-month break.
On the dock are leaders and activists of the Nightwatch public movement campaigning for protection of the monument to Soviet soldiers who liberated Tallinn from the Nazis. The defendants are Dmitry Linter, Maksim Reva and Dmitry Klensky, and Mark Siryk, the Estonian leader of the Russian youth movement, Nashi.
The trial opened on January 14 and continued in total for two weeks, excluding a 6-day break. Another break was announced on January 31.
European MPs Tatyana Zhdanok from Latvia and Zahra Wagenknecht from Germany who were at the trial said that the case is political, though it is seen as criminal in Estonia.
On April 26-28 Estonia was hit by mass disturbances after the government decided to move the remains of the Soviet soldiers from the mass grave on the Tonismagi hill in downtown Tallinn, along with the war memorial erected in their honor, to the Military cemetery. The Russian-speaking population in Estonia saw these steps as an insult to the memory of fallen soldiers. Riots also took place in Kohtla-Jarve in north-eastern Estonia which has a predominantly Russian-speaking population.
Around 1,200 people were arrested and around 50 were injured during the riots. Dmitry Ganin, a Russian national, was killed. The disturbances then grew into mass riots and acts of vandalism.
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